Psychology > Research and Experimental Psychology

Research and Experimental Psychology

The field of experimental psychology entails the application of testing methodologies to the study of psychology and its underpinnings. Experimental psychologists use human and animal subjects to investigate many different phenomena, including but not limited to: sensation, perception, memory, cognition, learning, motivation, emotion, development, social psychology, and the neurological underpinnings of all these. The human mind is an intricate and fascinating organ. To our relief, the scientific method handles such complexities. When these two are combined, we obtain experimental psychology, the study of the mind from a scientific perspective. When we talk about experiments, we're referring to studies in which people experience a battery of tests, and their results undergo analysis and comparison. To put it more appropriately, this implies that a sample of people gets exposed to some stimulus or stimuli, and scientists record their reactions. Some control condition, such as a neutral stimulus, the lack of a trigger, or a control group, is used to evaluate this behavior (who maybe do nothing at all).